Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/233

 At first he could not seem to remember for more than an instant at a time how he came to be there, and later, as his capacity for thought came back, he found his surroundings grown insensibly familiar to him. He felt himself somehow to have slipped so completely into the inside of things that it was impossible to recover the remote, hostile point of view which had been his as he had looked over the gate a fortnight ago. For instance, knowing now, not only that the children's faces were scrubbed to a polished redness every morning, but being cognizant through his window of most of the palpably unavoidable accidents of play which made them dirty half an hour later, he would have resented as unreasonable intolerance any undue emphasis on this phase of their appearance.

The first day that he was well enough to sit out on the porch was a great event. The children, who before had made only shy, fleeting visits to his room with "little handfuls of bokays," as their mother said, were as excited and elated over his appearance as though it reflected some credit on themselves. Indeed, J. M. found that he was the subject of unaccountable pride to all the family, and one of the first of those decisions of his between McCartey and Loyette occurred that very morning. The Loyette children insisted on being included in the rejoicing over the convalescent's step forward, and soon Pierre, the oldest boy, was haled before J. M. himself to account for his having dared to use the McCartey name for the sick man.

"You're not his Uncle Jerry, are you?" demanded Mike McCartey.

J. M. thought that now was the time to repress the